No Man's Land - Khador

I am finally making a start on my Khador army. I want these to be a ragged bunch fighting over a ravaged front. The bases are really going to be something special, hopefully. I want them to reflect the constant fighting the army has had to endure and in essence this will be closely modelled on WWI. There are a wealth of photographs available but these aren't always much of an inspiration. General details are fine to pick out but the quality of these early photographs is a little limited. In general I see that the ground is incredibly broken up with almost nothing growing there. I suspect there was still some grass or weeds but it won't be covered in stuff like my Circle bases are. Then there are the common elements like obstructions and craters. The obstructions are a problem as they can't be accurately modelled on the smaller bases. At least they can't be modelled easily. I guess there is a way to do it and I will try to figure that out. Debris is simple and I won't have to worry about that. Broken up pieces of wood and mangled metal are easily enough fabricated. I would like to have some skulls lying around. I was recently watching th documentary The Civil War and the shots of the battlefields showed plenty of skulls lying around. One thing I have noticed is the amount of water sitting in the craters. It looks cool but I hate using water effects on bases. It is almost impossible to get it to look right, at least the way I do it. So to sum up this is going to be a difficult task. It will be rewarding I am sure and it is going to teach me a lot. The best way to learn I guess is to make a small terrain piece representing a shelled out area of a battlefield. That is going to be the test piece I can use to experiment on. I have noticed a really interesting blog here that has some most excellent examples of terrain especially trenches. I haven't as yet delved into too much depth but so far I think there is a wealth of information to be gleaned. Here is an example of what I have been trying. I don't know if I will stick with this base but it looks okay. I guess over time I will refine what I am doing a lot. I wanted to have Drago look like he is appearing over the edge of a small trench or foxhole. I would have liked to have the side a little higher but it is okay for a first try. I felt that if I raised the model too high it would be way too top heavy to be practical, which is probably is already. I like the idea of adding some height to a model, especially the older metal khador Wwarjacks. It can be taken to the extreme and hamper playing. I am especially considering hills. A top heavy model and a hill just don't mix. The Kodiak is hte next model I will base and I think I will aim to have him walking through a crater. That can't be too hard to do right?